The Encyclical "Humanae vitae" has given rise to a great
deal of discussion. There is not a human being, there is not a human
group, that does not feel an interest in the thought of Paul VI,
operating as the responsible head of the Church: and consequently of the
Church not only in her present state, but in her development and in her
ultimate finality. And a philosopher can ascertain that this document on
"human life" touches on the problems that philosophy has
raised from the beginning: what do we mean by "nature"; what
is the relationship in us between characteristic essence and the
temporal existence into which this essence of ours is, so to speak,
thrown. The theologian sees that the Encyclical indirectly concerns the
problem of the authority of the Church, the charisma given to Peter,
which unites him with the Twelve at the same time as it distinguishes
him from them, and, even more generally, the problem of the relations of
authority with freedom, that is, the problem of obedience.

I think that every human person, in this year 1968, feels that this
Encyclical raises questions for him to answer. To my surprise I have
seen that it does not leave anyone indifferent; that it stimulates
passions to the highest degree, above all that it forces everyone
(whether for or against) to clarify his reasons, his intentions, his
fundamental conception of the world and of life. And this did not
surprise me, aware as I am that sex is a point of contradiction, use of
sex a sign of division between men.

In this article I would like to make this examination of conscience,
the examination that every conscience, as I have said, is making at this
moment, and examine what point the Encyclical has made me reflect on
most.

About twenty years ago, I published a work on "Human Love",
which included a chapter on the significance of sexuality. I meditated
on the mystery of marriage, placing it in the framework of the total
mystery of life, in the divine plan of nature and of history. And I was
struck by the twofold meaning which sexual union has for mankind and
which so greatly differentiates it from animality.

MEANING AND PURPOSE

In man, a "reasoning animal", "a finite being
inhabited by the Infinite", "a fallen God", as Lamartine
said, who remembers heaven, the union of man and woman has two aspects
which are at the same time distinct and united, different and
inseparable, and which therefore make up what in other times—before
the word had had such currency—I
used to call a "Structure".

What are these two aspects? Procreation on the one hand, the loving
union of two beings on the other hand. It is clear that animals know
only the first of these laws. It could be said, as Doms says, that
marriage has a purpose (Zweck) which is propagation, and that suffices
to define it; and at the same time it has a meaning (Sinn), and this
meaning is married love. It is obvious that if objectively the purpose
is more important than the meaning, subjectively it is the meaning that
comes first for conscience. People marry because they love each other,
for the purpose of founding a family. But the child is not the immediate
aim but rather the multiple blessing of married love that is reflected
in this aim. The development of human and Christian thought has stressed
this aspect of love contained in every marriage, not unknown to both
pagan (Plato) and Christian horizons, but which was pushed into the
background when the principal function of life was to multiply. Now it
seems rather that life should be limited.

Let us return to the "structure" of love. Two elements, I
said, that are ontologically inseparable: the love of the couple and the
foundation of a family. To a philosopher, a similar structure is to be
found in a particular case of a more general provision of the creator
that reveals his power, wisdom and his art of unifying distinct
essences, as in the Incarnation. The soul and the body that make up our
being are also two distinct entities, which only death separates.

Since these two entities are distinct, the problem to be solved is
whether human art in thought and in act, in philosophy and in technique,
has the power and the duty or the right to disunite them,

Here it is necessary to grasp the wisdom of the Church. She has
respected the structure of the act of human love; she has not sacrificed
one of the elements of this structure to the other, neither the meaning
to the purpose, nor the purpose to the meaning. But respecting such a
structure since it belongs to the order of essences, she has not
admitted that it should be broken or disunited by man's will, although
she has admitted that the master of essences, the creator, can divide
what he has united.

STRUCTURE OF MARRIAGE

Let us take an example from monogamy, which is simpler.

One man only, one woman only. Monogamy is essential in its design,
since only monogamy allows the equality of destiny of human persons.
Polygamy sacrifices the woman to the male. Divorce encourages tile
egoism of the two, and is extremely harmful to the child who has no
longer a normal educational environment. Such, therefore, is the
essential structure of sexual relations considered in their duration. It
implies a solemn promise of faithfulness that the social law will
protect. Does this mean that a person who has made such a solemn promise
is committed to such an extent that no essential incident can break it
and that, consequently, he is obliged to be faithful even beyond death?
In other words, does God's law forbid second marriages, which might
appear as cases of subsequent bigamy?

The Church has not taken this path: she authorizes widowers and
widows to remarry. Why? If we meditate deeply on the ontological motives
that justify the attitude of the Church in such a case, we find the
following consideration. The essential structure of marriage implies
monogamy; man cannot, therefore, refuse to recognize this structure and
repudiate his wife. But God can undo what he has united, by means of the
unforeseeable incident, coming from his sovereignty, which is the death
of one of the couple. And then the other is free to contract a new
union. And Jesus explains with deep wisdom that such a case does not
mean re-establishing in Eternity a polygamy that is forbidden in time,
since there will be neither man nor woman in the kingdom of God. The
sexuality with which we are concerned in this study is bound up with the
temporal condition of human life. Let us consider this.

Some ascetics, Catharists or Encratites, have affirmed that the
Church could or should forbid all use of marriage if deprived of the
purpose of procreation; for example the marriage of sterile persons, of
women deprived of the organs of reproduction, of old people; of women
expecting a baby.

If procreation were really the only end of marriage, the moralist
should hold that the use of marriage when this end is already reached in
nature or when it can no longer be reached, would be an act void of
meaning, like continuing to run—for
example—when the goal is reached.

Could such a use of marriage be admitted at the most on the ground of
weakness, of condescension, of appeasement, as a lesser evil?

I do not wish to deny that a certain number of Christian moralists
have supported such a point of view and that the idea of sexual union
divorced from the end of procreation should be merely tolerated as a
kind of imperfection and not approved.

If seems to me, on the other hand, that on this point, especially in
recent times, there, has been considerable progress in Christian
sensibility and reasoning.

As a whole and throughout history, the Church has not followed the
Catharists. She has not regarded as blameworthy, nor even as all
imperfection sexual union that is naturally sterile.

THE HEART OF THE PROBLEM

But then, it will be said, why not allow man, progressing beyond the
past and having become today more aware and more able to control
mechanisms, to dissolve the structure, seeing that nature dissolves it
in cases of infertility? Why not allow man to be really a co-operator in
the case, a constructor, in a certain sense, of the case, seeing that
nature, through a static or dynamic process, makes one woman sterile and
another fertile? If the work of intelligence is to replace the
statistical case with the rational rule, why should man not do what
nature does, what the Supreme author of existences disposes by
separating love from fertility? Why define as contrary to nature this
work of man's inventiveness, so similar to man's ingenuity in the
production of foodstuffs or remedies, since it follows the line of the
accidents of nature already mentioned? We accept wine, alcohol, tobacco,
sauces, the culinary art that Plato compared to rhetoric. Why not accept
as progress the domination of intelligence over cases, in the case of
generation?

Here we are up against an extremely difficult problem. And I will
say, in the first place, that ordinary common sense understands what a
delicate matter it is—considering
the generative instinct in its violence and in its subtleties—to
dissociate Eros from procreation. If man were naturally pure, if he did
not have the tendency to take Eros as the only purpose of the sexual act
(which animals do not do), if female nature and masculine nature were
equal and comparable on this point, if the male did not have a
dominating and alienating power over woman, then, in the hypothesis that
an effective and harmless process were found, it could be regarded as
without moral danger for man to utilize it just as he utilizes alcoholic
fermentation in drinks.

We could say, in a word, that Eros is good in itself, but that its
regulation is particularly dangerous, like the inner power of the atom,
to such an extent, in the case of the latter, that it would have been
better, everything considered, if atomic fission had not been
discovered. Good in itself, as the discovery of a cosmic energy, it may
one day appear as ungovernable, considering what national egoism in wars
is like. And if a wise commander had been able to forbid its use in
1945, he would be blessed. Not, I repeat, that it is bad in itself, but
it can be bad in the human context, by reason of the consequences.

It could be maintained, therefore, that, since it is actually
dangerous because of the individual and social consequences, due to
weakness and also because of the very structure of our nature, it would
be better to condemn outright all dissociation caused artificially than
to attempt to grade it; better to ban it completely, absolutely, than to
establish doses of what is licit and what is illicit.

A comparison will help us to understand better. Let us suppose that
considering that the duty of study is arduous, it is left to boys in
college to buy wine to drink during the recreation. There will certainly
be good reasons to prove the interest, the importance of such a practice
which can stimulate work and play, which can increase the boy's
autonomy, and give him practice in privation, in mastering his desires.
And there will be teachers or directors of education who will apply
themselves to regulating the purchase of wines, indicating what is
permissible and what is not permissible. But what head master would not
be in favour, on the contrary, of a radical ban, since this measure,
though coercive, will turn out to be advantageous for study, games, and
the true interest of everyone although it limits and violates several
individual freedoms.

And yet, to return to our image, if the Head of Humanity, certainly
an expert but even more so a leader, were to take a decision of this
kind, it would still be imperfect, being pragmatic and empirical instead
of rational and really prudent since it is founded on consequence,
rather than on causes and principles. Well, man is not only a moral
animal, requiring only rules of action. He is also a rational being, who
wishes to know "why" he must do what he is asked or commanded
to do. An order is not enough. A reason, too, is necessary. And the
reason that affirms a thing is useful is not yet sufficient, if it is
not accompanied by an ultimate reason: that is to say that the order is
true.

Let us reflect on the two inseparable meanings of the word order.

THE REAL REASON FOR THE LAW

What has to be done is to determine the ontological reason for the
law. And this is the function of the philosopher, of the theologian
insofar as he is a philosopher, whereas the theologian as theologian has
as his main task to find out if the law is contained in the revealed
Doctrine. The characteristic function of the philosopher as philosopher
is to find out if the law derives from being, existence, reason, nature,
if it is obligatory for every reasonable being, whether the latter is
illuminated and fortified by reason or not.

Here we have reached the most difficult point, which is also the most
important, the crucial one.

If what we have said about the structure of being is true, we see
here clearly and distinctly that the Encyclical in so far as it
contains, encloses or presupposes a philosophical ontology, respects and
determines the fundamental principle that we had supposed at the
beginning of this study.

We can state it as follows: when a structure of a unitary being
grows, in an indissoluble whole, which thus makes two distinct and
different elements cooperate in a profound unity of life, only the
creator of this structure has the power of detaching these two elements
and allowing them to realize themselves and develop separately.

Hence the corollary: those who are not the creator of natures, cannot
separate artificially what has been joined ontologically.

Here, however, it is necessary to be more precise, since things are
not so simple as they appear. In fact, in the case of relations between
man and woman, there is a situation which is neither the absolute law of
nature nor artificial separation; it is the situation of the infecund
periods in the female cycle. Observation shows, in fact, that while
woman may nearly always be available for love psychically, she is
physiologically fertile only in the course of a limited monthly period.

Are we to consider that this sterile period, in which the separation
of the meaning and of the purpose of marriage occurs without human
intervention and therefore naturally, cannot be chosen by the human
agent for sexual union? Or is it to be admitted that such a one may
avail of this natural periodic circumstance to have intercourse without
fertility?

It is extremely important to answer this objection. We are here at a
point where the reader must concentrate all his attention.

In fact, the objector will say at this point: "How can we
justify an approval of ‘regulation of births’, that is, of licit
contraception, if it is contrasted with a contraception that is
considered illicit What real, objective difference exists between the
temperature test and the pill, since conception is prevented in both
cases?

Only two solutions are logical: either we must refrain from
separating, through human interventions what ‘God has united’ thus
forbidding both regulation and contraception; or, through eagerness to
be all things to everyone and to respect the rights of tenderness and
love, we must allow both the pill and the temperature test.

"But to admit the temperature test and forbid the pill—the
objector continues—is an attitude
of compromise that can be admitted from the tactical, pragmatic point of
view, but which is not based on objective reality, on an analysis of
true values. Fundamentally, the Church is acting here, as it often does,
in a skilful and falsely prudent way: since it is impossible to justify
the fact that she forbids here and permits there, through reasons of
ontology or ethics".

One might answer this subtle objection in the first place by
stressing the effort, the moral value, the self-control, the spiritual
elegance—pointing out that the
automatism of the pill dissolves effort, reduces love to automatism, and
threatens to replace Agape with Eros, by dispensing with the mutual
obligation and sacrifice of abstention and waiting.

But this argument would not reach the heart of the problem. In the
first case (temperature test) there is not really contraception. Here
man acts as in all cases in which he respects natural data: the farmer
chooses the favourable time to sow, he does not change the order of the
seasons. Now, if the human person has a legitimate reason to space out
births or even to renounce births that would endanger the health of the
mother, one can see no reason why he should renounce an act or a gesture
that fulfils his psychical and moral finality in marriage and love.

One could even go further and say that there is, as it were, an
invitation by the creator of nature, of sex and of their union, of
married and family life, to utilize the sterile periods placed by the
author of nature in woman's cycle.

We can see that there is a deep vision here that concerns the very
structure of being and of the human act and also a difference between
art and artifice. Speaking as a philosopher (and not as a theologian) I
will even say that the Encyclical on human life—particularly
in paragraph 16—makes it possible
to study a law of being in temporal existence. Morality and Ontology
have deep relationships, and it is for intelligence to define them
better.

Taken from:
L'Osservatore Romano
Weekly Edition in English
28 November 1968, page 6

L'Osservatore Romano is the newspaper of the Holy See.
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